Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether members of the public will have a right to attend Sustainability and Transformation Plan board meetings.

We have made clear that the on-going engagement of patients and the public is part of good planning. However the Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) are not statutory boards. Rather they are meetings attended by representatives of the wider health system, and are not required to meet in public as are formal boards.

The local, statutory architecture for health and care remains. As such, the local governance for STPs will ultimately be through individual organisations. Public access to Board meetings of their local organisations will be unchanged.